Photo-sharing extends outside the Marine Corps
According to Fox News and BBC, they’ve uncovered more photo-sharing websites besides the now-defunct Marines United Facebook page which reportedly posted photos of female servicemembers in various stages of undress. From Fox News;
Male service members from all military branches have been sharing nude photos of women on an anonymous website called Anon-IB, BBC reported Friday.
The servicemen allegedly post photographs of clothed female colleagues and ask anyone on the message board if they have any “wins” – the term used for nude photos, according to BBC.
“Any wright patt wins? I’ll start off with some,” one anonymous user posted on the message board, referring to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
From BBC;
Although the Marines United Facebook group has now closed, there are at least half a dozen similar groups or sites, Marine officials told CBS News.
The Senate Armed Services Committee is due to hold a hearing on the issue next week.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) has launched an investigation and has asked whistleblowers to come forward with information.
From CBS News;
CBS News has learned the investigation has spread to all branches of the military.
The website titled Anon-IB first gained notoriety for publishing nude photos of celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence. But it also contains a message board for military personnel where men from all branches of the military exchange comments and nude photos of female service members, sometimes identifying them by name and/or duty station.
Maybe they can bring back Marty Dempsey and he can teach the Pentagon how they can look the other way.
Thanks to Mick for the links.
Category: Big Pentagon
I suspect that there are probably hundreds of thousands of such images out there, but there really isn’t anything that can be done about it. There’s no way to legislate behavior like this away, UCMJ won’t work because a person can always wait until after they leave the service to post such pictures and, unless there is some cue that determines exactly when the photo was taken, claim that they took the picture at a time when they were not subject to military justice.
If they wait until they leave the service they might face other issues, with more states having revenge porn laws there might be a criminal issue, and without a model release there might be a civil liability issue.
Posting private photos for which you have no model releases places you in some liability if you are discovered.
Alas-no woman has ever favored me with pictures of herself starkers (my wife has better sense). However, if one did and if I were the sort who would post them online (and I am not saying that I am) there are all sorts of ways I could get around being discovered. Using an anonymizer when you go online and using the free wifi somewhere would probably suffice. It would then be so much “he said, she said” about who had possession of such photos and I really can’t see many District Attorneys using their office’s time to pursue such cases. You might catch those who make it a point to post the pics for revenge-and want to make sure that their former girlfriend knows it-but few others.
Those things all work until the victim sees them and point LE in your direction…depending on your state’s laws where it goes from there can be right to your doorstep. ISPs will rat your ass out, and anonymous sites are often not so anonymous…
Not saying you can’t get away with it, just saying why bother?
Too much time and energy and potential risk for zero gain….as I’ve been sued for any number of things as a volunteer for youth sports I can tell you after a while you get really tired of litigation…even when you win it’s a time consuming giant pain in your ass…and I’ve never lost yet…but the winning feels like losing some days…so maybe that’s why I’m far less interested in doing stupid shit because even when I’m doing what I believe to be good guy stuff someone believes they’ve been injured to the point where litigation is the only path forward….
An anonymizer hides your IP address-and they work just fine, we used them in Kuwait to get around restrictions they had on their internet. Look, I’m not saying anyone should do such things or that the laws are not well-intended, but they are probably unenforceable from a practical perspective.
In one of the op eds on this I read recently, it seems that more than a few of the pictures had been collected by IT folks as deactivated computers. In more than a few instances the women themselves were sending these pictures over government systems to their (in)significant others.
It brings up some interesting issues with regards to handing out punishment for violating IT rules.
Hmm that would seem to put an interesting spin on rights to the images.. seeing as how in my experience, in most cases, anything stored on a govt. computer, or even business computer, becomes property of the govt, or business..
On a side note, I saw a commenter on fox news this morning, and she said that NCIS was the National Criminal Investigative Service… I guess it’s true, ya can’t fix stupid..
Had a 1SG lose his career after he sent naked selfies to his SPC girlfriend on a GOV computer. He now has an ex-career, an ex-wife, 3 ex-kids he’s paying for, an ex-house he’s paying for, an ex-dog, and I bought his ex-car.
Oh, I have a great idea. Let’s get nekkid photos of all those GUYS, especially the vengeful ex’s, and post THOSE where everyone can see them.
What’s good for the goose is peachy for the gander, right?
I can’t say that wouldn’t be fair.
Assuming that the guys in question were also dumb enough to send naked pics of themselves, or keep them on a govt computer.. Like many others have said, others can’t post these pics if you don’t put them out there to begin with…
One of the other heads on this multi-headed thingee is that some of the guys were photoshopping their ex’s heads and faces onto nude bodies, and posting them to the interwebz.
Well that seems to be just weapons grade stupid there…
I am shocked, shocked! I say, that young men like to look at nekked young wimmin, and young wimmin like to share their nekked photos with attractive young men.
/sarc
In other words, the boys and girls of today are just like we were when we were young, and as I learned from my father’s stories, just like the Greatest Generation was during WWII.
In fact, reading the Iliad and the Odyssey, it appears that this has been going on quite a while. Who’da guessed?
“Grog make cave painting of Grog wife-Grog wife smoking!”
“Here Og, you look.”
“Unh-Grog wife hot, but here cave paining of Og wife! Look at nice curves!”
Both grunt appreciatively.
Nothing has changed except the medium and technology.
When this whole issue first arose earlier in the week, I shared my own story of having released such photos of an ex-girlfriend of whom I was and am none too fond. It hadn’t been something I’d thought much in the almost decade-and-a-half since then. Quite a few people didn’t see it my way, to say the least.
Well, the other day I was talking with my wife about something unrelated, and we got to talking about our two (soon to be three) kids. I don’t think I’m unique in saying there’s a couple of things I hope my kids don’t find out about me as they get older, and I started thinking about the responses I got.
Honestly, my opinion of the ex-girlfriend hasn’t changed. And I still won’t go so far as to say a woman isn’t at least not terribly smart to let such pictures out in the first place. But that doesn’t really matter, because regardless of whether she deserved better or not, my wife and kids DO. And after really thinking about it for the first time since then, I realize that that is not the example I want to set for my son. It’s not something I want my daughters to see when they look at their daddy. And since my wife told me when we first got together that I wasn’t like the other douchebags she’d dated, I should try not to be like said douchebags.
So VOV, Timactual, and the rest, you guys are right and I was wrong. The plate I’m eating off of is piled high and deep with crow, and no, it doesn’t taste like chicken.
You’re a good man, TOW. And a good example for kids everywhere.
TOW we were having an honest discussion of what we each believed was acceptable to us, all I intended was to indicate what I’m comfortable with for myself.
We all do things that we later consider and undoubtedly regret, there are many things in my life I wish I could take back and state differently to avoid hard feelings when hard feelings weren’t necessary, like the Allman Brothers said, I’m no angel….no worries you are always good with me brother.
In any event it speaks directly to your character that you have reconsidered and would do things differently. You aren’t alone there my friend as I said…..
Sometimes apologizing for something we’d like to take back speaks as much to our character as not making the mistake in the first place.
Here’s hoping the young men involved in these incidents can learn to rethink their position as well, some will undoubtedly discover UCMJ has an answer for them while others might discover revenge porn laws have an answer for them. That’s a really hard lesson to learn when you are in front of a judge….
I’m with you TOW with respect to things I hope my kids never learn about me…I hope they always see me as they do now, someone who has done the right thing in his community for years by volunteering time and donating money and that they never discover the young man who was more comfortable using violence to resolve problems than using his head…
Well said TOW, and i’m sure it’s a rare individual indeed that doesn’t have something in their past they wish they’d done differently ( is sure as hell have more than my share) Damn good on you for not only recognizing it, but being big enough to put it out there.
Good people do the right thing nearly all of the time. And when they don’t, they correct themselves quickly. Now, if we each listed just 50 things we regretted doing or wished we hadn’t done, we would have a great many more unlisted.
If one, later in life, has nothing in early life to regret, then one was probably not trying very hard then, or thinking very hard now.
Not just the Marines? Who saw this coming, besides Helen Keller, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, I mean. What’s next, a gay site that features pics of gay and not-so-gay service members? (Hey. I said members.) Of course, someone has to look at those sites to find out.
There was a story all the way back in 2004 about a NC guard troop who had taken naked pictures of herself while in Iraq and how they had been spread throughout theater. I can neither confirm or deny having seen photos of that sort on deployment.
Something slightly off topic but interesting to consider is that back in the ancient days of the internet, around 2003, a young lad named Mark Zuckerberg hacked into the Harvard computer system, and lifted images of the school’s sorority coeds. The idea was to post them on a new website called The Face Book to compete with another college bro site called Hot or Not.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
He actually called it “Facemash.”
Shut down before the transgenders could start posting in their uniforms.
Maybe someone should start a page asking for any “wins” of Daniel Bernath successfully landing an airplane or winning a court case.
Naked women pictures on the internet? Well I never!
Right on queue leftists manufacture their outrage when they got shlacked in the election.
I see one of the stories is from BBC. Here’s a tip for the day: don’t do a Google search for “BBC naked photos story.” You may get some interesting results.